Here are the highlights!
Tewkesbury With Claudio
One weekend in January, we wanted to take a day trip, so Claudio was looking at this blog to see which interesting nearby places he hadn't visited yet. He read this post I wrote about visiting Tewkesbury in September 2023 and decided he'd like to go there.
I think Tewkesbury is quite an underrated place - it is very picturesque, but doesn't get the crowds that the nearby Cotswolds do. We had a nice, chilled-out time walking by the river, visiting the magnificent abbey, and exploring the town centre.
After walking around in the cold, the best way to end an outing is, of course, by stopping off at a café! There are quite a few independent cafés in the town that looked interesting, but most were quite crowded. Then we came across a Greek Cypriot café called Coffee Mer Med that had a few free tables, and decided to go there for lunch. We really liked this place - both the food and the décor transported us to the Mediterranean, making us feel like we were inside a taverna on a sunny island, rather than in England on a cold, January day!
Reading, London and Pangbourne
I had a couple of days off from work recently, which we used to go and do some research on where we'd like to live in the near future. We've been thinking about Reading as a option, as it's quite easy to get from there into London on the Elizabeth Line, rents are cheaper than in London proper, and it's also quite convenient for us to go back home for visits.
To get a feel for what it would be like to live there, we stayed in an apartment at Premier Suites Reading rather than a hotel. We actually got upgraded to a two bedroom apartment, which had a really big living space, and we loved it. It was definitely the sort of property that we'd like to be living in within the next year or so.
Although I've passed through Reading train station (which is very modern and almost feels like an airport) many times, I'd never actually been to the town itself, so it was interesting to finally explore it. I hadn't heard much about it, and it was actually quite a pleasant surprise for both of us. Even though it's not in the capital itself, it definitely has a London vibe to it - when you come out of the station, you're greeted with the sight of high-rise buildings and traditional London taxis. The town centre is generally clean and attractive, and has a modern shopping mall, called the Oracle, which was quiet and calm when we visited on the Thursday we arrived, though it did fill up on the Saturday.
There's also a riverside area with lots of restaurants, which is quite picturesque. We went to Côte on our first day, taking advantage of a promo code that I'd got for entering a competition!
After lunch, we explored Forbury Gardens Park and Reading Abbey Ruins. The ruins were really striking, and it was great to see some of the historical side of the town.
Then we walked along the river...
...until we arrived at the Huntley Wharf housing development. These apartments reminded us of where we used to live in Santiago, and is the sort of place we could see ourselves living in the near future.
The following day, it was time to head into London! We took the Elizabeth Line into the city to get a feel of what commuting in would be like and also to get to see some more potential areas to live. We stopped off at Ealing Broadway to get to know the area a bit, as it's quite a convenient place in terms of transport. As it happened the weather was awful that day - freezing cold, rainy and windy - which wasn't much fun, but at least it meant we got to see potential areas to live at their worst, most depressing time of year, which was quite useful actually!
I felt fairly neutral about Ealing - it didn't quite have the London vibe I was expecting, and seemed like any other generic British town, but we did like exploring Walpole Park, where you can find Pitzhanger Manor, an old manor house with an art gallery inside.
After lunch, we took the District Line over to Barking in the East End of London, as we'd seen there were quite a few places to rent there. The area just outside the train station seemed a bit run down, but other parts were a bit nicer. We went to Abbey Green Park, which has the ruins of an old abbey. Nearby, there are lots of new, modern apartment buildings, which looked nice, but we weren't convinced we liked the area enough to live there. We're thinking that we might next look into Stratford as a place to live, as I really liked it when I visited during my Gap Year in 2015.
This was probably the first time I've visited London without seeing any of the touristic areas. I've always felt a buzz of excitement when visiting the capital, from Little Venice to the Greenwich Meridian and everywhere in between. But I didn't really feel that in either Ealing or Barking, and was surprised that Reading actually felt more "London" to me than they did.
The next morning, we decided to get a feel for the sort of weekend activities we would do if we were living in Reading, and took a very short train journey to the picturesque village of Pangbourne, which is located on the border of two areas of natural beauty: the North Wessex Downs and the Chilterns.
Claudio especially enjoyed Pangbourne, because it has both an Aston Martin and a Lamborghini dealership!
We enjoyed walking around the traditional English village and then across the river to Whitchurch-on-Thames, which was very scenic indeed.
The only thing missing was a cute café or tearoom like we have in the Cotswolds!
We went back to Reading and had a quick look round the shops before going to find some lunch in the riverside area. One downside to the town was that most of the restaurants were packed, even though it was after 2 pm, which isn't very usual for the UK. Eventually, we went to a Japanese noodle place called Marugame Udon, which wasn't too crowded. I hadn't heard of it before, but I looked it up and found out that it's a chain of restaurants that are only located in London and Reading! The food was really good and the portions were very generous.
After lunch, we had a walk along part of the river we hadn't explored yet, and looked at some more apartment buildings.
We finished off our weekend in Reading with coffees and a pastry in Gail's bakery. This is somewhere I wanted to try specifically because it's a London chain with a few branches around the South East, and not somewhere you can find where we live in the South West (Coffee #1 is our regional coffee chain!). However, the café was quite cramped (we had to wait for a seat) and the food and drink was a little pricey. But it was nice to be able to say we'd tried it!
Overall, the weekend gave us more of an insight into the what it would be like to live the London/Reading lifestyle! We've now explored quite a few potential places to live in and around the capital: Borehamwood in Hertfordshire, Redhill in Surrey, Reading in Berkshire, Ealing in West London and Barking in East London. Of course, there are plenty more possibilities, but Reading is looking like the winner at the moment.
I'm looking forward to when we finally move and blogging all about it - but first of all, we've got a honeymoon to enjoy! I'll be back here on this blog next month, hopefully with some very exciting travel stories to share!
